Fuze survey reveals U.S. workforce hampered by multitasking and disengagement

Thought leadership

January 27, 2014

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Study of information workers finds 92% multitask during meetings; 41% do so often or all the time.

SAN FRANCISCO – Jan. 27, 2014 – FuzeBox, a leading cloud based provider of real time communication and collaboration services, today announced findings from a national survey on meeting and workplace behavior. The study found that our always on, connected lifestyle is leading to a more distracted and less efficient workforce.

According to the Fuze survey of more than 2,000 U.S. information workers*, 92 percent confess to multitasking during meetings and 41 percent admit to doing so often or all the time. As outlined in The High Cost of Multitasking infographic, industry research shows multitasking actually lowers productivity, increases errors and causes stress among workers.

Considering the amount of time we spend in meetings, this is a significant drain on resources and productivity – 52 percent of survey respondents spend 13 hours in meetings weekly and 34 percent spend between 4 and 10 hours in meetings. Employees admit to a range of multitasking activities during meetings, the most common included checking email (69%), working on unrelated projects (49%) and
eating (44%).

At the root of the problem is a lack of face to face communication that holds employees accountable and reduces multitasking. For example, 56 percent say they multitask most often on phone conferences, and that number drops to 16 percent during in person meetings and most significantly to 4 percent during video conferences. Apart from being more engaged during video conferences,
employees are also more prepared — 63 percent admitted to spending more time preparing for a video conference call than an in person meeting.

Video conferencing also provides stability and improved engagement for the increasingly distributed global workforce and the rising number of teleworkers seeking greater work/life balance. Survey respondents agreed 57 percent would travel less and would telecommute more if given the option to video conference, and 67 percent would have deeper engagement with other employees and would feel more comfortable working in remote offices more often.

“Evolving workplace dynamics have created employee engagement and productivity issues that require executive attention in order to optimize individual and organizational performance”, said David Obrand, FuzeBox CEO. “Fuze is redefining the video collaboration experience, which starts with reliability, ease of use and the highest quality user experience. This approach is helping leading companies increase employee engagement and productivity, while also lowering costs by consolidating audio, video and web conferencing investments with Fuze and reducing IT support requirements through our global, cloud based platform.”

ABOUT FUZEBOX:
FuzeBox provides real time voice, video and content collaboration solutions that allow people to work together more effectively across locations and devices. Leading companies, including Starbucks, NASA, Ogilvy and Mather Worldwide, Kellogg’s, and General Motors rely on FuzeBox technology for flawless presentations, online meetings, marketing webinars, screen sharing and collaboration. FuzeBox also

helps solve the interoperability issues between HD telepresence systems by allowing users to easily connect regardless of which brand of equipment they use. FuzeBox was named one of Forbes’ Most Promising Companies in America for 2013 and was recognized as the #125th fastest growing company on the Inc 500. For more information visit www.Fuze.com.

*Survey Methodology
This poll was conducted exclusively for FuzeBox by SurveyMonkey Audience [hot link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/audience].
The more than 2,000 respondents were randomly selected and are a representative national sample of information workers in the U.S. They completed the online survey on November 19th 20th, 2013. Our reported data has a 3 percent margin of error with
a 97 percent confidence level. Because of rounding, some percentages may not add up to 100 percent.